As a result of the falling price and increasing power of computing systems, personal computers are becoming ubiquitous. With increased access to the Internet, the number of users or subscribers to telecommunication networks has also increased. As the size and weight of computing systems rapidly decrease, there has been an enormous increase in the number of mobile computing platforms, such as smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and the like. As a result of this explosive growth in numbers of personal computers and mobile computing platforms, telecommunications network providers have seen an increase in the number of subscribers to the network.
In addition to the increase in the number of subscribers to telecommunications networks, there has also been an increase in the number of services available to these subscribers. Example services include presence service, email, voice mail, caller ID, and others. As the number of services increases, and the number of subscribers to those services also increases, it becomes economically efficient for a telecommunications service provider to create a node or network entity that is dedicated to providing a particular service, rather than having every node in the network provide that service. For example, in a network that uses the session initiation protocol (SIP) to establish media sessions between two nodes in the network, a network provider may set up a node within the network as a SIP proxy/registrar node, to which all SIP user agent clients (UACs) in the network will send SIP registration messages.
There are disadvantages associated with this approach, however. If a service-providing node fails, this may cause an increase in message traffic from the service clients. For example, if the SIP proxy/registrar node described above, fails, the UACs will attempt to re-establish their sessions by issuing registration requests. If a network has a large number of subscribers, this may result in a flood of messages across the network, which may drive the network into a congested state. In addition, if and when the failing node recovers, the flood of messages directed to the node may overwhelm the node, causing further congestion and potentially causing the node to fail again. Even if the node continues to operate, it will attempt to respond to all of the messages received, effectively doubling the amount of traffic on an already congested network. The situation is worsened if the protocol used allows multiple reconnection retries—the increase in congestion may continue indefinitely, until the node recovers and has a chance to respond to all queries.
Accordingly, in light of these disadvantages associated with conventional network configurations, there exists a need for methods, systems, and computer readable media for providing sedation service in a telecommunications network.